Lover Beware Read online

  “Pardon me, sir, but I’m unsure exactly what that means.”

  Delgado’s eyes flickered to Rule. Knowing the man’s discomfort, Rule took the burden of explanation from him. “Initially, at least, it means we must visit the morgue. I need to smell the corpse.”

  Chapter 3

  LILY LEFT THE chief’s office fifteen minutes later, confused and irritated. Now she knew why the autopsy had been held up, though.

  Maybe Rule Turner could identify the killer from the scent he’d left on his victim’s body. Maybe not. She couldn’t take his word at face value. People lied. They did it all the time, to protect small hurts or embarrassments as well as for more serious reasons. But if he claimed to identify the killer, that would be information, whether it was true or a lie.

  She had to figure out his goal, what he had to gain by helping them investigate. Lupi weren’t exactly civic-minded about cooperating with the police. Of course, Rule Turner was politically active on behalf of his people, something of a spokesman. Not to mention a favorite of the gossip mags.

  He was also a civilian. Lily did not like working with civilians, but she could concede the necessity at times. Her confusion had little to do with her professional irritation.

  Those eyes…she’d never heard that it was dangerous to look into a werewolf’s eyes. But there was a great deal she didn’t know about them, wasn’t there?

  The man beside her kept pace silently. At least, she supposed that was the right word for him. Could you be a man without being human? Never mind, she told herself, moving briskly. The courts had ruled that lupi had the same rights and obligations as other citizens…when they were in human form.

  His human form was pretty devastating, she admitted silently. Or maybe that was an aspect of his magic, whatever it was that enabled him to turn into a wolf. Or gave him no choice. Legend said that werewolves couldn’t avoid the Change at the full moon.

  “You move quickly, Detective,” Turner said as they reached the elevator.

  She jabbed the down button. “Habit. People with short legs learn to move fast, or we get left behind.”

  “Is that what it is?” He sounded thoughtful. “I thought you were trying to leave me behind. You’re not happy with Chief Delgado’s instructions. I’m afraid I disturb you.”

  “You annoy me,” she corrected. “Cocky, arrogant men usually do.”

  “Arrogant, perhaps. Cocky is for puppies.”

  “You said it, not me. Where were you last night between ten o’clock and eleven twenty-five?”

  “At a party with about twenty other people. A party at the mayor’s house.”

  So much for wiping the amusement out of his eyes. “Were you there when the mayor was called? Is that how you heard about the second killing so quickly?”

  “Yes. The mayor asked for my assistance.”

  The stupid elevator was taking forever today. She punched the button again. “If you’re ready to start acting as an expert consultant, I have some questions.”

  “Of course. I hope they’re personal.” He stroked his hand down her braid. “Lovely. It feels as soft as it looks.”

  The shiver that ran up her spine was as distressing as it was instinctive. She stepped away. “None of this is personal, and you need to keep your hands to yourself.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “You’ll have to do better than try.”

  “We are a profoundly physical people, Detective. It’s difficult for us to remember that others don’t have the same need to touch and be touched that we do.”

  She lifted a scornful eyebrow. The Nokolai prince had been mixing and mingling with normal humans quite regularly at events from San Diego to Hollywood to Washington, D.C., for the last few years. He knew perfectly well how to behave—when he wanted to. “And here I thought you were hitting on me.”

  “That, too, of course. Will you go out with me tonight?”

  Her lips twitched before she could stop them. Maybe his existence wasn’t illegal anymore, but that smile ought to be. The way it spread over his face was a crime—so slow and intimate, as if smiling were a sensual indulgence to be savored, not rushed….

  The elevator finally arrived. Three people got off. She stepped in quickly.

  He followed. “What impersonal questions did you want to ask?”

  “I know lupi have a toxic reaction to silver, because the X-Squads used to use rounds made from a silver alloy.” A very expensive alloy. She had a round in her clip right now, having requisitioned it and two more after the first killing. “What about garlic or crosses?”

  “No and no. Old wives’ tales.” He pushed the button for the basement level, which held the parking garage. The elevator doors shut.

  “I thought it might be. I’m afraid a lot of what I know is the sort of garbage spread by movies like Witch Hunt.”

  “At least you know it’s garbage.”

  He was tense. She wasn’t sure why she was convinced of that—he stood easily, spoke smoothly, and that remarkable face was still, unrevealing. “I’ve also heard that lupi are claustrophobic.”

  “It’s hardly a phobia. We simply prefer open places.”

  Not small, enclosed spaces. Like an elevator. Abruptly she pushed the button for the next floor down, and the elevator slowed.

  “Why did you do that?” he snapped.

  “There’s no reason for you to be uncomfortable. We can take the stairs.”

  The elevator halted smoothly and the doors opened. Two people were waiting to get on. The woman was a civilian, fortyish and plump—a clerk or secretary, from the look of her. Lily knew the man slightly, a Vice officer named Burns. She nodded at him.

  He didn’t notice. He was staring at Turner. If he’d been a dog, his hackles would have been raised. The woman was staring, too. But the expression on her face was entirely different.

  The tableau lasted only a second before she and Turner got off, the other two got on, and the elevator doors closed. She glanced at him as they started down the hall, wondering if he’d noticed the woman’s reaction. She had to look up, of course. He was too blasted tall.

  He was looking straight at her, those rainy-sky eyes amused and knowing.

  “You tend to evoke a reaction from people, don’t you?”

  “Usually. Why don’t we start my expert consultation with listening? You can tell me what you think you know about lupi and I’ll correct any misinformation.”

  “Good enough.” The door to the stairwell was metal with the usual red Exit sign over it. She reached for it.

  Somehow he was there before her, opening the door and holding it for her. He hadn’t seemed to rush, yet he’d moved very quickly. Lily stopped, studying him. He looked elegant and not at all civilized in spite of his trendy black clothing. “Legend says lupi are fast. Really fast.”

  He just smiled.

  Something shivered down her spine. She got her feet moving and didn’t speak again until they both were on the stairs, headed down. “I know the legal history best. Until 1930, the only federal law related to lupi was the one making it a crime not to report someone, ah, afflicted with lycanthropy. State laws varied widely. Most of them treated lupi as humans who had a dangerous disease. Some called for them to be killed outright. Then Dr. Abraham Geddes proved that lycanthropy could not be transmitted, as had previously been believed.”

  “The Change isn’t catching,” he agreed mildly.

  “Right. It’s an inherited condition. Folklore and experts alike agree that the trait is sex-linked. There are no female lupi.”

  “True.”

  “I guess the experts can’t be wrong about everything. Anyway, soon after that came Carr v. the State of Texas. The Supreme Court’s ruling effectively made lupi legally human, but with a congenital disease, one that, well…”

  “Makes us mad. Incurably insane. We were locked up, if discovered. Usually in chains.”

  “Yes. Well, that was some time ago. There continued to be a good deal of debate about w
hether lupi were human. Some of those of the Blood are obviously nonhuman, of course.”

  “Gremlins, brownies, the odd pooka or banshee.”

  “Pookas? I thought they were—never mind.” She shook her head. Later she could ask if pookas were really extinct or not.

  They’d reached the fourth-floor landing. He was still moving easily. She was, too, though her heart rate was up slightly. She wondered if he could hear it. Lupi were said to have extremely acute hearing. “In 1964 Dr. Beatrice Pargenter discovered a serum that inhibited the Change, and everyone who considered lycanthropy a disease applauded. It was considered an enormous, and humane, breakthrough. Congress passed the registration laws, which remained in effect until five years ago.”

  “You do have your legal history down.”

  “I’ve boned up.”

  Rule Turner’s forehead was smooth. No tattoo, nor any sign that one had been removed. The authorities had used a special, silver-infused dye to tattoo the registration number, since the body of a were would otherwise have healed the tiny wounds inflicted by a needle within minutes. “You never registered, did you?”

  “Why, Detective, I do believe that’s a personal question.”

  “And I do believe you’re obnoxious. That’s a personal comment, by the way. I understand the drug was very unpopular with the lupi.”

  “Since the side effects ranged from vertigo to nausea to impotence—yes, it was unpopular. But even if they’d been able to refine their damned drug, no one wanted it.”

  His voice had lost its subtle balance between seduction and mockery. The emotion she heard was real, and personal.

  They’d reached the subbasement. He pushed open the door and held it for her, as he had before. She went through it, uncomfortably aware that he was inviting her to expose her back to him.

  The parking garage looked like others everywhere—gray and ugly. The air was hot and smelled of exhaust fumes. The light was flat, fluorescent, and grimly bright. “You didn’t want to give up the Change.”

  “We no more wish to give it up than you would want to be chemically lobotomized. Still, I suppose it was an improvement over being killed or castrated.”

  She paused, startled. “Castrated?”

  “Ah. A gap in your legal history, Detective.” His eyes were oddly pale in the artificial light. “Yes, for a few years some states dealt with ‘the lupi problem’ the way scientists have dealt with fruit flies—by rendering us unable to breed. It was considered more humane than shooting us on sight, like rabid dogs.”

  He radiated anger, far more than the glimpse she’d had before. His face was taut with it. An old anger, she thought, but one that hadn’t lost any of its power over time. Over the castration? Yes, she decided. His people had been killed, imprisoned, chained, drugged, tattooed, but it was the castration that made him vibrate with suppressed rage.

  Had he been…

  No, that was stupid. According to the file on her desk, Rule Turner had two sons, by two different mothers. Neither of whom he’d bothered to marry.

  Even if he hadn’t been a lycanthrope, he would so not be her type. She nodded to the left. “My car is this way.”

  “Mine isn’t. I prefer to drive myself.”

  “Life is full of these little disappointments.” She started walking without waiting to see if he followed.

  After a bare second’s pause, he did. “Are you used to having your way, Detective, or simply testing my willingness to cooperate?”

  “I’m used to driving myself. California hasn’t allowed the kind of vigilantism you described for over three decades, you know.” And never castration.

  “Which is one reason my clan chose to settle here.”

  Lily knew about the Nokolai enclave in the mountains outside the city, of course. She’d gone there shortly after the first murder—and been turned away at the gate, politely but firmly. It was outside the city limits, so she lacked the authority to insist she be allowed inside. The lupi were a secretive people. Not without reason, given the persecutions of the past. But those persecutions hadn’t been entirely without reason, either.

  Before the change in the laws, the enclave had masqueraded as a religious commune. Most people knew differently now, but they didn’t realize that the land that made up the enclave was owned by the Nokolai chief personally. So was the other property Lily had found—a ranch in northern California, some choice L.A. real estate, and several condos here in San Diego.

  The Nokolai chief was a rich man. His son seemed to do pretty well for himself, too.

  She stopped at a plain white sedan that looked like a dozen others lined up beneath the low ceiling. He stood on the other side of the car, waiting for her to unlock it. Their eyes met. Her spine tingled. “There’s a bill due to come before the House this fall,” she said. “The Species Citizenship Bill. According to what I’ve read, you’re strongly in favor of it.”

  “Interested in politics, are you?”

  “The Supreme Court ruling already gives you citizenship. The Species Citizenship Bill won’t change that, but it will declare lupi and others of the Blood nonhuman.”

  “But entitled to the rights and responsibilities of citizenship whether we’re on two feet or four.” He studied her face a moment, then nodded as if he’d confirmed something. “You don’t approve of a law that would treat a beast as a person.”

  “I don’t understand why you’d want to be declared nonhuman!”

  He lifted those tilted eyebrows. “I am a lupus of Clan Nokolai. What else matters?”

  Arrogant bastard. Lily swung her door open and slid inside. She could well believe he was royal. She could also, all too easily, believe he was a predator.

  She let him in and started the engine. He slid in beside her and, after a second’s hesitation, reached for the seat belt.

  It occurred to her that a car was another small, enclosed space. She punched the buttons to let down the windows. “Hope you don’t mind,” she said casually. “I like fresh air.”

  “Not at all. I’m sure the air will grow fresher soon.”

  At the moment it smelled of oil, exhaust fumes, and hot concrete. Heat rose in her cheeks, but she didn’t think he’d notice. She was, quite literally, thick-skinned. Neither bruises nor blushes showed much. “Do you really think you’ll be able to sniff out the identity of the attacker?”

  “I don’t know. My senses aren’t as acute in this form. It’s worth trying.”

  “A less acute sense of smell would be a blessing at the morgue.” With sudden alarm, she added, “Unless you plan to, ah—”

  “I won’t Change. Aside from the discomfort, and the danger of doing so in these surroundings, it is not allowed. Not within the city.”

  “The Change is uncomfortable?”

  “It can be. We are tied to nature. Changing while surrounded by buildings, concrete, and steel instead of earth and sky, is…possible. But it exacts a price.”

  She thought about that as she pulled out into traffic. Had whoever Changed in order to kill done it in a park, or some other pocket of nature? “You say you’re forbidden to Change within the city limits. You’re not talking about the law.”

  “My Lupois forbade this many years ago.”

  “Lupois?”

  “You would say ‘king’ or ‘high prince.’ Though perhaps ‘clan chief’ is closer.” He was sitting with his forearm propped on the window opening. Air streamed through, pouring itself around that narrow, sculpted face, whipping his hair around it.

  She spotted a gap in the other lane between a panel truck and an SUV, accelerated smoothly, and whipped into it. The panel truck honked. Turner’s hand clenched tightly on the door. Charitably, she chose to overlook that. “The Lupois is your father.”

  “Yes.”

  The Change was intensely important to him, to all lupi, from what he’d said. If the Lupois had the authority to forbid or restrict it, that was considerable power. “And do all members of your clan obey the Lupois in this?” />
  “I would have said yes, until I heard of the first killing. Now I don’t know.”

  “You think it’s someone from your clan.”

  “I don’t know,” he repeated, and she heard a thread of anger or frustration in his voice. “We are the only clan near San Diego, but we aren’t the only lupi.”

  He would want it to be someone outside his clan, she thought, signaling for the turn. “I know about big, close-knit families. I come from one myself. A brother, two sisters, three uncles, four aunts, lots of cousins. Both of my father’s parents are still living. Then there’s Grandmother.”

  If he thought it was ridiculous for her to compare her extended family to a lupus clan, he didn’t say so. “You say ‘grandmother’ as if she were the only one to bear that title.”

  “She’s one of a kind, all right. My sister and I call her Tiger Lady—though not to her face. I’m named after her. That is, I bear the English version of her name.”

  “My name is Anglicized, too.”

  She glanced at him quickly. “Turner?”

  “No, Rule. It was originally Reule. French.”

  “So what does it mean?” The light was about to change. She accelerated through it without quite running up the bumper of the car ahead of her.

  “Little wolf.” He exhaled. “Get a lot of tickets, do you?”

  “No.” She hadn’t seen him tense this time, but out of the corner of her eye she did catch him relaxing again. She grinned. “I’m a good driver, actually. Good reflexes. Not as fast as yours, I suppose. I guess it might be nerve-wracking to have someone whose reflexes are half the speed of yours in the driver’s seat.”

  “Only if they think they’re invulnerable,” he said dryly.

  “You’re the one who ought to feel invulnerable. It takes a lot to hurt a lupus, doesn’t it?”

  “Because we heal so quickly, we can take a lot of damage. But we have the same nerve endings humans do. We hurt every bit as much.”

  He thought of himself as a lupus. Not as a human. For the next few blocks she couldn’t think of anything more to say.